Thursday, March 31, 2011

Human Herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) is an immunosuppressive and neurotropic virus

Human Herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) is an immunosuppressive and neurotropic virus that can cause encephalitis and seizures during a primary infection or when reactivated from latency in immunosuppressed patients.

New research suggests that HHV-6 may play a role in several chronic neurological conditions including MS, mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, status epilepticus and chronic fatigue syndrome. There is an urgent need for more sensitive diagnostic assays and for studies that can prove or disprove the important disease associations that have been suggested. HHV-6 was discovered in 1986 in AIDS patients with cancer and lymphoproliferative disorders.

There are two distinct variants of HHV-6. HHV-6A is the strain most likely to be found in MS, CFS and AIDS and cancer patients. HHV-6B causes roseola, febrile illnesses and encephalitis in infants and reactivates in transplant patients, causing complications such as encephalitis, pneumonitis and liver failure. HHV-6B infects close to 100% of children by the age of two, causing mild flu-like symptoms and rash in some, but occasionally progresses to high fever, encephalitis and seizures. In most cases, the virus goes into latency. However, in patients with impaired immune function, the virus may persist in its active state at low levels for years.

While it is generally known that HHV-6 causes roseola and occasional seizures and encephalitis in infants, most physicians do not realize that HHV-6 can persist in a subacute form causing CNS dysfunction. HHV-6 can also cause selective immune suppression and alterations in cytokines that make it more difficult for the body to fend off cancer, intracellular pathogens, viruses and mycobacteria. Finally, HHV-6 has potent transactivating properties that cause it to stimulate other viruses, such as EBV, CMV and HHV-8. Read more>>

"Plenty of people are still dying of diseases which other people do not believe." (Dr. M.N.C. Dukes).CBT and GET for ME: "There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity."

Robertson Davies

THE NICEGUIDELINES BLOG VERSUS THE NICEGUIDELINES

These are NOT the NICEGuidelines. This is "The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG." What are the differences:

The NICE Guidelines are biased publications based on the GOBSART (Good Old Boys Sitting Around a Table) approach.

This Blog however is not only evidence based but also uses critical reading to judge papers and articles. I also use common sense and listen to others. And finally I read both psychiatric and medical evidence and opinions from around the world to come to a conclusion.

I’m not sponsored by anybody or paid by whatever company as seems to be the norm with many psycho people who publish the same article almost on a weekly base.

So if you value an opinion, formed as a result of participating in many ME activities, for example being bed bound for years, you have come to the right BLOG. All these activities have allowed me to form an opinion as a Doctor and as a Patient. And that is important as the voice of the latter is discarded by many including NICE.

If you don’t read this blog, you will miss out on “accredited” medical education. If you do read it, you may actually become a doctor who doesn’t stop thinking or forgets to ask critical questions. Many good things, including satisfied patients are at your command.

So, if you arrived here for the straightforward GOBSART approach, I will disappoint you. If you are interested in forming your own opinion about ME, and other interesting things, read on!

About Dr. Speedy.

I am a Family Physician or GP as it is called in Australia or the UK. I am also an ME patient unfortunately. Bedbound that is. So at the moment I’m in private practice so to speak. I’ve got only one patient, ME, or is it me?

I graduated as a doctor a long time ago, and I am the founder and editor of The NICEGUIDELINES BLOG, an internet based ME BLOG that is devoted to critical reading and cheering you or ME up.

I have the following conflict of interest: I would like to get better and see that the wasting of public money on CBT (talk therapy for a neurological disease, really helpful) and other silly therapies for ME stops, and will be used in better ways.

My goal has always been to help, and if possible, cure patients. With this disease you will soon find out that many psychiatrists and psychologists are only in it to make money and get their name in the spotlight. And what happens to and with the patients is irrelevant.

I stand to benefit both mentally, physically and also financially if this silliness would stop, and I would get my health back, and I can go back to work and have a normal life again. Please evaluate my postings with this in mind! And remember, there are also (lots of) psychiatrists and psychologists who haven’t switched their brain off.